Jake Silverstein

Things have changed dramatically since Texas Monthly published its last list of the state’s top fifty barbecue joints, in 2008. Not only has there been an unprecedented flourishing of great new joints in the past five years (sixteen of the places on this year’s list were not even open in 2008, including two of the top four); and not only has there been a corresponding flourishing of new barbecue blogs, books, and TV shows; but…

You may have noticed that when we released our list of the Top 50 BBQ Joints in Texas this week, we went ahead and declared them to be the Top 50 BBQ Joints in the World. It’s right there on the cover, where we crossed out “in Texas” and wrote “in the world.” Our logic here is simple. To paraphrase a commenter on Twitter who put it best, Texas BBQ > other states’ BBQ >…

To create the lettering for our June barbecue issue, creative director TJ Tucker spent six long hours playing with barbecue sauce. Aaron Franklin graciously provided the sauce, and to achieve the right look, we thickened it with agar, an edible hydrocolloid that is used much like flour or cornstarch. It doesn’t sound like it compromised the delectability of the sauce: “At the end, we dipped some sausage in the logo,” Tucker said. (And as much…

In June we’ll publish our every-five-years list of the top 50 BBQ joints in Texas, which is always one of the most hotly anticipated issues we put out. It will be on newsstands on May 22, and we’ll be releasing the names of the joints on the list later this week, but let’s start with the cover. Here it is, in all its meaty glory. Note that all of the lettering has been done with…